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Carson Cistulli
Carson Harrington Cistulli (born December 23, 1979) is an American poet, essayist and academic. His works of poetry include Some Common Weaknesses Illustrated, Assorted Fictions, and A Century of Enthusiasm. Life Youth and education Cistulli was born in Concord, New Hampshire, to Molly {Young) and Philip Cistulli, Jr.Concord Monitor. May 3rd, 2009 He passed his early childhood in a middle class Italian-American home until his parents' divorce in 1994. Rather than choosing to live with either of his parents Cistulli left for boarding school at Milton Academy in Massachusetts. After graduating from Milton in 1998, he attended Columbia University where he studied under poet Kenneth Koch of the New York School of poetry. After his studies under Koch, he moved to Seattle to write. He would later receive a bachelors degree in Classical Civilizations from the University of Montana in Missoula and a master's degree in Creative writing from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Panic Attacks In an essay about sports and aesthetics, "A Lengthy Meditation on Baseball and the Science of Happiness," Cistulli explained that part of his turn towards writing was a therapeutic response to anxiety attacks. Cistulli wrote that these attacks became so intense that he at times struggled to breathe: "During the fall of 2001, while living in Missoula, MT, I began experiencing some symptoms of generalized anxiety: occasional tightness or pain in the chest and limbs, invasive thoughts about death and illness ... those symptoms persisted off and on into the next spring, at which time I developed a considerably less pleasant one (i.e. symptom): for long periods of time, and with no warning, I was unable to breathe involuntarily".I am Trying to Break Your Eyes: A Lengthy Meditation on Baseball and the Science of Happiness Retrieved November 25th, 2010 A biographical reading of his poetry highlights echos of these experiences, death,Cistulli, Carson. Some Common Weaknesses Illustrated. Casagrande Press, 2006, "My nephew was the lawyer who represented death"; "How far does death see?"; "about to die, he withdrew all his money and bought what he could of an artificial heart"; "The directions say take a left here but that would necessitate death"; "So either the directions are wrong or they're just directing us to die". P. 20, ect.Cistulli, Carson. A Century of Enthusiasm. University of Massachusetts Amherst, 2007, "I suggest you find a place for me in your library—until I die, at least". ¨P. 50 "Chapter 87" disease -- "At some point you'll die of a) cancer b) heart disease..."Cistulli, Carson. Some Common Weaknesses Illustrated. Casagrande Press, 2006 -- the apparently offhand remark of breathlessness in Chapter 84 of A Century of Enthusiasm, Part III. After a lengthy meditation on enthusiasm (and a call towards listening,Cistulli, Carson. A Century of Enthusiasm. University of Massachusetts Amherst, 2007, p. 47 "Chapter 66" invocations of both the ontological argumentCistulli, Carson. A Century of Enthusiasm. University of Massachusetts Amherst, 2007, p. 47 "Chapter 70", "Chapter 71", p. 48 "Chapter 80" and the ten commandmentsCistulli, Carson. A Century of Enthusiasm. University of Massachusetts Amherst, 2007, p. 49 "Chapter 82", "Chapter 83") Cistulli writes: Radio Hosting Cistulli was previously the host of "Goal: The Soccer Show" (103.3 FM Northampton, MA) and "The Shuttlecoque Sporting Hour" (1450 AM Portland, OR.) He is currently the host of FanGraphs Audio. With FanGraphs Audio he has interviewed, among others, Matt Antonelli, Rob Nelson (inventor of Big League Chew), Dayn Perry, Jesse Thorn, and Rob Neyer. Writing Poetry Cistulli’s work A Century of Enthusiasm begins “People of the world, allow me to introduce myself: my name is Carson Harrington Cistulli, ambassador to crunk in the Western Hemisphere”.Cistulli, Carson. A Century of Enthusiasm University of Massachusetts Amherst, 2007, p. 1 Carson plays with context and language often mixing the vernacular with the scholastic. References to pop-culture (like the above mention of crunk) and intertextuality with scholastic figures as varied as Ralph Waldo Emerson,Cistulli, Carson. A Century of Enthusiasm University of Massachusetts Amherst, 2007, p. 1, p. 19, p. 38, p. 42, p. 46The Sabermetric Project and The Science of Words Retrieved November 25th, 2010 Sean CaseyCistulli, Carson. A Century of Enthusiasm University of Massachusetts Amherst, 2007, p. 23, p. 29, p. 39, p. 50The Long Hello Some Notes on Luck Retrieved November 25th, 2010Cistulli, Carson. A Century of Enthusiasm University of Massachusetts Amherst, 2007, p. 31 or Emily DickinsonCistulli, Carson. Some Common Weaknesses Illustrated. Casagrande Press, 2006, p. 23 occur frequently in his work. Cistulli also plays with the notions of authorship,Cistulli, Carson. A Century of Enthusiasm. University of Massachusetts Amherst, 2007, p. 1, p. 6, p. 18, p. 50Cistulli, Carson. Some Common Weaknesses Illustrated. Casagrande Press, 2006, p. 8, p. 19, p. 36Cistulli, Carson. Some Common Weaknesses Illustrated. Casagrande Press, 2006, A Note on the Type poetic inspiration,Cistulli, Carson. Some Common Weaknesses Illustrated. Casagrande Press, 2006, ImprintCistulli, Carson. Some Common Weaknesses Illustrated. Casagrande Press, 2006, p. 14 and recontextualization.Cistulli, Carson. Some Common Weaknesses Illustrated. Casagrande Press, 2006, p. 9, p. 10, p. 23, P. 66, p. 70 Lisa Baker writes that "In a day and age when we are quick to consume the rigid definitions of relationships fed to us by those who wield power, Cistulli tutors us in language’s malleability; a new comparison, an unexpected verb in a familiar phrase can force an entirely new perspective — and perhaps one more curious and more generous." Authorship In his essay Let us Proclaim the Mystery of Faith Cistulli references the "ineffability" of authorship. To the question who is the author Cistulli writes that "there is no answer. Or, rather, there is no one answer". Following Borges' "whatsoever is good does not belong to anyone, not even to the other, but to language and tradition" Cistulli re-writes Walt Whitman's famous "I am large—I contain multitudes" as "it is large and contains multitudes." The effects of the re-interpretation of the author as multiple, fragmentary and opaque can be seen in James B. Jones review of Some Common Weaknesses Illustrated. Jones writes that reading Cistulli is “as though Rimbaud, the Boston Sports Guy, a drunken Slovene, and the director of advertising for a struggling talk-radio station all sat down for a game of exquisite corpse”.Bookslut – Some Common Weaknesses Illustrated Retrieved November 25th, 2010 While this review was written in 2007, it could easily have been written about Cistulli's 2010 piece A Poem with Dick Allen’s Name in It: }} In this excerpt the I -- Cistulli who will elsewhere introduce himself as "Carson Cistulli. You may know from me such films as 'How Stella Got Her Groove Taken Away in the First Place' and 'Haters Gonna Hate: The Life and Times of Jimmy Stewart'." -- is lost and in its place, insofar as Cistulli will write of an author, authorship, as taking place, is the "unassailable" it writing between and beyond a stable "I" who can say 'I wrote this' (for as Cistulli writes, citing Borges, "I do not know which of us is writing this page.") Essays and journalism 's Shuttlecoque Sporting Club Logo]] Cistulli's essays and journalism have appeared in The New York Times, SBNation, FanGraphs,Fangraphs Archive: Carson Cistulli Retrieved November 25th, 2010 ESPN,ESPN: Carson Cistulli Retrieved November 30th, 2010 The Hardball Times,The Hardball Times: Carson Cistulli Retrieved November 25th, 2010 The New Enthusiast,The New Enthusiast Archive: Carson Cistulli Retrieved May 4th, 2011 RotoWire,Rotosynthesis Archive: Carson Cistulli Retrieved November 25th, 2010 The Huffington Post, and The Portland Sportsman.The Portland Sportsman Archive: Carson Cistulli Retrieved November 25th, 2010 He won the FSWA 2011 basketball sports writer of the year award for his writing at Rotowire.FSWA Writing Awards Retrieved January 19th, 2012FSWA Twitter Retrieved January 19th, 2012 Sabermetrics Cistulli has written that his interest in sabermetrics is to explore "that place where quantitative analysis and aesthetics meet" in practicing what he calls the artFangraphs: The Long Hello Retrieved November 25th, 2010 of sabermetrical research. Within sabermetrics he is the creator of NERD,Fangraphs: Introducing NERD Retrieved November 25th, 2010Fangraphs: Introducing Team NERD Retrieved November 30th, 2010 SCOUT and historical GBz%. Cistulli has influenced many contemporary sports thinkers including Rob Neyer who, asked about the value of Cistulli's work within the sabermetric community, responded "there's value in just about everything that Cistulli does. He's got an original mind and we'll ignore him at our peril."Chat with Rob Neyer Retrieved November 25th, 2010 Feast Days In “admiration” of the Eastern Orthodox Church practice of feast days] and saintly hymns, Cistulli began writing verses for past and present baseball players in February 2011 with a hymn to Bug Holliday. He has since written hymns to Dazzy Vance, Honus Wagner, Sparky Anderson and Vladimir Guerrero, among others. These celebrations include a traditional biography, a lyrical “prayer,” and, beginning with the feast of Liván Hernández, propose a spiritual “ritual” or “exercise” related to the player’s life. Electronic Aphorisms In January 2009 Cistulli decided to add "Moral Edification" to his writing at The New Enthusiast: "in the tradition of Heraclitus, La Rochefoucauld, and Morgan Freeman in most of his later films, we have decided to experiment with that most honored form, the aphorism". In addition to these daily aphorisms he started writing aphorisms for SB Nation in March 2011. Publications Poetry *''Some Common Weaknesses Illustrated''. Salona Beach, CA: Casagrande Press, 2006. * Assorted Fictions. Southampton, MA: The Chuckwagon, 2006? Other * Englished by Diverse Hands (2003) * Free Radicals: American poets before their first books (2004) * Origin, sixth series, Spring (2006) * A Century of Enthusiasm (2007) Edited • The Prostituesdays Anthology (editor, 2008) See also * List of U.S. poets References External links ;Poems *"That Girl's Breasts" ;Prose * The Long Hello: Some Notes on Luck 2009 * I am Trying to Break Your Eyes: A Lengthy Meditation on Baseball and the Science of Happiness 2009 * Sabermetric Blogging and the Oinoanda Inscription 2010 * Hell Isn't (Necessarily) Other People 2010 * TLDR: On Learning to Die 2011 ;Audio / video * NPR/WFCR Interview - Tina Antolini interviews Carson Cistulli * Fangraphs Audio - Host * Goal: The Soccer Show - Host ;Books *Carson Cistulli at Amazon.com ;About * Carson Cistulli at the Huffington Post * An Interview with Carson Cistulli at DRaysBay, 2009 *[http://www.bookslut.com/poetry/2007_07_011342.php review of Some Common Weaknesses Illustrated] at bookslut Category:American poets Category:American radio personalities Category:University of Massachusetts alumni Category:1979 births Category:Living people Category:21st-century poets Category:English-language poets Category:Poets Category:American sportswriters Category:American academics